


Love, Charted

by MelyndaR



Series: Wings [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Wings, F/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-12 02:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7916518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyndaR/pseuds/MelyndaR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finally he noticed what Jack had been doing – plucking ice chips out of a bedside cup with painful slowness, and flicking them onto Edwin. Out of habit, the butler’s first reaction was indignation, and then he noticed Jack’s face as the chief said helplessly, “I don’t know how to get her off,” as he gestured to Peggy.<br/>Edwin’s foggy brain was slow to pick up on what he was actually seeing versus what he automatically expected to see as he began to ask, “Get her off of w…ould you look at that!”<br/>Peggy was lying atop one of Jack’s wings – one of his fully-formed, admittedly rather impressive, something like a ferruginous hawk wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love, Charted

In her entire life, Ana’s wings grew exactly three times – spontaneously becoming a third of the way bigger overnight after a day during which she’d met one of her soulmates.

The first time Edwin met Ana – the first of his soulmates – his wings did the same thing. Mutual love at first sight apparently, which resulted in Edwin waking up in Budapest the morning after meeting Ana to find that surprisingly sizeable light gray wings – _in the style of a sort of crane,_ he decided, studying the new addition in the mirror – had sprouted on his back. The growth of his wings wasn’t particularly surprising – he _had_ just met his first soulmate, after all, and _of course_ he loved her instantly – but the _rate_ at which they’d grown… he had to admit _that_ startled him.

Curiosity – and a general desire to see her again – drove Edwin back to the Hajnal family tailor shop for the second time in as many days. _With a purpose, even,_ he told himself. After all, that tie that he’d bought from Ana the day before matched none of the shirts that he currently owned; perhaps he could rectify that by buying a shirt at the tailors’.

So he walked into the little shop – and froze dead in his tracks when he realized that it was indeed Ana behind the counter. Her wings had sprouted too, quite clearly, and just as _much_ as his had. However, where his were a plain – indeed, nearly drab – pale gray, Ana’s were an eye-catching bright yellow.

 _Canary yellow_ , he decided, and nearly laughed with glee at the thought. Canary. _Yes, of_ course _Ana’s wings would look like a songbird’s…_

The thought was still dancing in his eyes when Ana turned and saw him standing there. Her eyes widened when she saw how large his wings already were as well, then she smiled at him, soft and playful all at once… and to Edwin it felt like the beginning of everything.

* * *

 

In retrospect, he wasn’t sure why he had expected the same thing to occur when he met his second soulmate, because it didn’t, and besides that, such an experience as he and Ana had in the sudden growth of their wings _was_ an unusual thing. But at the same time, he supposed he had expected to see _some_ sort of growth in Peggy Carter’s dark brown wings – _as in bald eagle; what else for her?_ – the second time he saw her. But her wings, such as they were when he met her, were so small that one barely noticed the rise of the little downy tufts beneath her blouses. That was a disturbing enough fact when one considered that she claimed to have met her first soulmate – a man named Jack Thompson – months ago. Edwin tried not to let it bother him that meeting him hadn’t changed the size of her wings right away.

On the other hand… his wings didn’t change instantly either, which became a good thing when it came to hiding his… rather dubious activities with Miss Carter from Ana. It was a situation that he didn’t like in the least, but, given his wife’s lingering demons from the war, he truly felt it was for the best that she didn’t know what he was getting involved in – something of a “domestic” war that it was.

However, his… inclinations for having order in his life, as well as, perhaps, a learned scientific approach courtesy of Mr. Stark, kicked in, and Edwin found himself curious – and perhaps a little wary. Simply for the sake of curiosity, but also to monitor it so that he might know if he should start getting concerned that _Ana_ might notice, he began to track how much – or how little – his wings started to grow after meeting Peggy. When possible, he even tried to make note of whether or not _Peggy’s_ wings seemed to be growing.

And very little bit by very little bit – as the relationship he had with Peggy became rather hesitantly deeper – he _did_ note some slow but steady growth in both their pairs of wings.

* * *

 

Meeting Jack Thompson for himself cleared up two things for Edwin – his guilt over not telling Ana what he had been up to (soulmate or not, he didn’t want Ana around a man who would so easily threaten her), and the question of why exactly Peggy’s wings had never really _grown_ because of having Agent Thompson in her life. The man was, in Edwin’s mind, abhorrent and remorseless, and – again, supposed soulmate or not – he didn’t care to have Jack in his life.

So, for a solid year, he did his best to keep Jack out of his life… and, in a way, the worst part was that Jack didn’t seem bothered by it in the least.

* * *

 

Inevitably, Ana _did_ notice that Edwin’s wings were slowly growing – courtesy of Peggy, if not Jack – but she only asked him about it once they had moved to LA with Mr. Stark.

Edwin wasn’t sure whether that was a mercy or God’s punishment when he was faced with Ana’s expression as he told her the truth. She wanted to meet Peggy instantly, stubbornly brave redhead that she was, but he simply didn’t see how it was possible.

Then Jack interfered in that theory only a few months later, sending Peggy to the LA office – and the Jarvises by default – and Edwin told himself the chief of the New York SSR had almost certainly meant it as some sort of slight against someone. He ignored the way that, according to his chart, his wings grew only barely noticeably courtesy of Jack for possibly the first time ever, and promptly found an excuse to introduce Miss Carter to Ana.

It was clear that the two women were enthralled by one another instantly, and he wasn’t even surprised when he woke up the next morning to find Ana’s wingspan had doubled; he just smiled as Ana blinked in the mirror at her own reflection, somehow surprised at what Edwin had long ago surmised. It was just how Ana’s heart worked – if she decided to love you, she loved you with nothing less than her whole heart from the very beginning, and her wings were only a physical manifestation of that.

When Miss Carter came to breakfast unwilling to meet anyone’s eyes with a wingspan that was noticeably larger – though nowhere near as completely so as Ana’s – Edwin had… _sense_ enough not to mention it. For him, it had always been enough to notice the minuscule growth in Peggy’s wings from week to week.

Similarly, he pretended not to notice how Peggy gasped aloud when she noticed the not at all subtle change in the size of Ana’s strikingly bright wings. The adoration that sparked in the eyes of both women as they looked at one another was more than enough there.

* * *

 “What do you mean _shot_?!” Peggy demanded sharply.

It barely made sense that those words would rock Edwin and Ana’s carefully constructed world – the one that had already been recently changing so much – as much as they did. No one questioned a thing as Edwin, Peggy, and even Ana piled into one of Mr. Stark’s many cars and drove to the hospital. No one questioned the way that Ana and Peggy wrapped themselves around one another in the hospital waiting room and did _not_ let go – after all, Ana had her recent trauma connected to this very place, and Peggy could’ve only been shaken over the harm coming to a coworker. Edwin knew better, but either way, no one questioned it when he flitted between the two women – trying to get them to drink or eat or remember to _breathe_ – and the nurses’ station – all but begging for updates and answers.

This time he just couldn’t seem to make himself sit still, not like he had when Ana had been shot and he suspected he’d gone into some sort of shock. He moved for what seemed like days, weeks, months, until he eventually dropped into a chair beside Ana and instantly fell into an exhausted sleep.

He woke up to a nurse – Chief Sousa’s fiancé, Violet, he noted distantly – shaking Peggy’s shoulder as she said the blessed words, “Chief Thompson has made it out of surgery.”

Peggy jumped up instantly, and Ana was at her heels with a strangled gasp. “Can we go see him?” the brunette asked as Edwin flew to his feet as well.

“Yes, of course,” Violet replied hesitantly, “But he hasn’t woken up yet, and…” she hesitated before informing the anxious trio. “They retrieved the bullet, but it was dangerously near to his heart, and you have to understand that there’s a chance that—”

Edwin cut her off, not willing to hear the words that he and Peggy both already knew far too well from Ana’s recent ordeal. _“He might not wake up.”_ He couldn’t hear them say that about Jack, Edwin knew suddenly. He couldn’t allow Ana to go through that agony if at all possible, and, quite frankly, he didn’t know if _he_ could bear it again… not when Jack hadn’t even had a chance to figure out how he could fit into his own soulmate quartet. “We want to be there regardless.”

Violet met his eyes, surprised first at his curtness, until sad understanding flashed through her eyes and she nodded, acquiescing professionally, “Yes, of course.”

She gave them Chief Thompson’s room number, and Edwin put a hand between each of his soulmates’ shoulder blades, steering them in the proper direction without another word. If there was more that the three of them needed to know about Jack’s condition, they could hear it at his bedside.

* * *

  _It was funny,_ Edwin thought, finding himself waking up at about one in the morning, _how true it was that one never knew what they had until they lost it… Or_ nearly _lost it, as the case was_ , he reminded himself firmly, looking down at the blond man in the hospital bed. Jack wasn’t dead – _he refused to allow the “yet” that played near the edges of his consciousness_ – and Edwin, Peggy, and Ana refused to give up on him, comatose though he might be.

With that thought still in mind, Edwin once again looked between those who had first caught his eye the moment he woke up. Ana, sitting halfway upright yet asleep in a white chair beside him, and Peggy, who had managed to curl up in the hospital bed beside Jack to sleep overnight. Ana’s wings had grown for a third time last night – that would be Jack’s doing – and over a year’s worth of practice at observing Peggy’s wings gave him the idea that hers too had gotten slightly bigger.

Peggy’s fierce, yet oftentimes surprisingly fragile, heart had been broken and wounded so often that he doubted he would ever see outright, instantaneous growth from her wings. But there was the fact that her wings _did_ continue to grow – almost constantly, really – and further proof spoke for itself as he looked at her sleeping on that bed beside Jack. She loved them, all three of them, in her own way, and that was a comforting thought with the uncertainty that was currently looming over them.

Carefully untangling himself from Ana, who had taken it upon herself to use one of his wings like an afghan around her shoulders throughout the night whilst she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her own wings around them – _he didn’t understand how she could sleep that way_ – Edwin stood and silently stepped to Jack’s bedside. He could hear Peggy’s shallow breathing, and while he could visibly observe the rise and fall of both chests, he found himself compelled to put a couple of fingers to the pulse point in Jack’s neck, just to feel it and be _sure_. It was there, of course it was, but he felt ridiculously better just having checked it.

Until Jack suddenly jerked, his right hand flying up to grab Edwin’s wrist in a tight, panicked sort of grasp. The blonde’s eyes were startlingly wild and glazed over all at once – nearly unseeing, Edwin suspected – as his gaze darted towards the attacker Jack had surely imagined him to be.

“Jack, Chief Thompson, it’s only me, Edwin Jarvis,” he promised in a soft whisper, hoping not to wake up Peggy or Ana just yet.

It was a marvelous thing that Jack had woken up at all, but with that look in his eyes, Edwin didn’t trust him to stay awake more than a few seconds at best. _Still, he needed to be calmed regardless, right?_ Edwin lifted his free hand to Jack’s forehead, pleasantly surprised somewhat to find it fever free, even as Jack turned away to look in confusion at the other “assailant” of his bed: Peggy.

“It’s Peggy, Jack,” Edwin murmured with a soft smile. “And I’m here, and Ana’s sitting in a chair right over there, and none of us are going to leave this hospital until you do too.” Knowing he might care to know the particular detail, Edwin added, “Chief Sousa is looking for your shooter as we speak.”

But after the remark about Ana, Jack’s gaze had barely even slid in that direction before his eyelids began to drift closed again, a small, strange little smile on his face. So Jack had woken up for all of five seconds, which was a fantastic thing, but as Edwin moved towards the door to find a physician and tell him about the new development, he had to wonder if his soulmate would even remember their conversation.

He was halfway to the door when he noticed the image staring back at him from the mirror. Edwin’s own wings had clearly grown overnight as well, and when he looked back at Jack for a moment, he really thought for the first time about something that he had glanced over long ago.

Jack had wings, too. Rust-colored, very small, and almost entirely thanks to Peggy, given Jack’s nonexistent exposure to Ana and his complicated relationship with Edwin, but his wings were there… much like the downy little tufts that Peggy had when Edwin first met her, and now her wings were slowly growing every day.

She had real, flight-ready wings now, even though it had taken time, longer than it did for most.

Jack had long had some sort of wings. Jack had loved at least one of his soulmates to some degree ever since before Edwin had met him.

And the one thing he could think of as he found the doctor was that he – that he, Peggy, and Ana – _needed_ Jack to live long enough to be able to truly fly.

* * *

 The next morning, Edwin woke up with a jolt, extremely stiff, with sunlight pouring in through the slats in the blind and freezing water sprinkling his face.

_What the-?!_

That was when he noticed what Jack had been doing – plucking ice chips out of a bedside cup with painful slowness, and flicking them onto Edwin. Out of habit, the butler’s first reaction was indignation, and then he noticed Jack’s face as the chief said helplessly, “I don’t know how to get her off,” as he gestured to Peggy.

Edwin’s foggy brain was slow to pick up on what he was actually seeing versus what he automatically expected to see as he began to ask, “Get her off of w…ould you look at that!”

Peggy was lying atop one of Jack’s wings – one of his fully-formed, admittedly rather impressive, something like a ferruginous hawk wings.

Edwin couldn’t help himself; he laughed aloud, relieved that Jack seemed to have properly woken up despite the butler’s late-night misgivings, and clearly he remembered something of their conversation from the early morning hour given that he seemed to so suddenly have decided he really loved the soulmates who were keeping vigil over him.

At his laughter, Ana and Peggy both woke – Peggy upright instantly, and Ana a little slower as she scrubbed at her eyes. Then it was Ana’s turn to spring into action – darting towards Jack’s bedside as she noticed he was awake – as Peggy rubbed a hand over her eyes – making sure she saw what she was really seeing in the matter of Jack’s sudden wingspan.

“You’re awake!” Ana declared happily, grinning widely as she moved to sit on the edge of his bed.

 “So it would appear,” he returned dryly, though smiling tiredly all the while.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Jack,” Edwin said with a cheerful smile, standing to go to his bedside as well.

Peggy, however, was still entirely caught up in staring at his wings, and she ran a hand ever so gently over the one she’d been laying on before she caught the chief’s eye and whispered only, “Oh, Jack…”

Jack smiled timidly, suggesting in a tone that held far more lightheartedness than the sincerity in his eyes did, “I guess I love you three too, now.”


End file.
